Groundwater Modeling

"Figure 22. Ground-water levels for the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie aquifer, Washington and Idaho, September 2004 (revised after Campbell, 2005)." 

Hsieh, P. A.; Barber, M. E.; Contor, B. A.; Hossain, Md. A.; Johnson, G. S.; Jones, J. L.; Wylie, A. H. Ground-Water Flow Model for the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, Spokane County, Washington, and Bonner and Kootenai Counties, Idaho. Scientific Investigations Report 2007–5044 2007. DOI:10.3133/sir20075044.

I created the model on the right from data provided by the USGS' Ground-Water Flow Model Report. This model was created using HydroGeoPT, a code used in Microsoft Excel, written by John Devlin at the University of Kansas (Devlin, J. F. HydroGeoPT v1.3 2024). To start the model, I traced the contour intervals of the map (Figure 22) shown to the left and overlayed it on my spreadsheet. Boundaries were created for the aquifer by inputting the numerical values of the contours in the cells below them. Hydraulic conductivity values were pulled from Figure 8, and Figure 37 was used to determine where to place them. The conductivities were then pulled to calculate values inside the boundary. Using the data shown in HydroGeoPT for SVRP Aquifer with Boundaries (below), I created the final product by making it a contour chart in Excel.